Macbeth Saves the World
by TARDIS Blue Carbuncle
Summary: Before Macduff finds King Duncan dead, Macbeth stumbles upon the two guards he framed. Then, a strange man appears, claiming to be his conscience. Things go downhill from there. T for safety.


**Author's Note: I have an announcement to make: I AM NOT DEAD! I am sincerely sorry for not posting anything for a semester, but I've had a difficult second semester of school. To be succinct, there was this big project for English class, and I had no time to write any fanfiction. For my project, I wrote a book and published it (author pauses while she squeals with excitement). For those interested, it's called ****Civilization Dying****, it's a Kindle E-Book, and you can find it under the title or my pseudonym, C.F. Kelley.**

** Anyway, now that I'm back on , I am going to get to work on "The Affair of the Angels that Wept", because I have been getting messages about that story. I give you my word, I will finish it. However, until I get the approval of my editor Gollum Slayer 576, I am going to feed this little morsel to all of you eager little readers so that you are satisfied until I have that next chapter done.**

** This is a play that I had to write for that same English class while we were reading ****Macbeth****. My class was put into groups, and we had to come up with a scene that would have taken place between one of Shakespeare's official scenes. My group and I decided to write a scene where we see Macbeth kill the guards that he framed for the murder of King Duncan. This would be between the time Macduff finds the murder scene and Macbeth tells everyone that he slew the guards in anger. I wrote this entire script myself, and the only thing that the other members had to do with this was its approval and the acting, and though I do not own Macbeth, I do own the guards and Macbeth's conscience. The Elizabethan language was extra credit, but if I got anything wrong, please do not hesitate to correct me (especially you English and History teachers out there). I have put the play in story format to comply with the rules on Fanfiction.**

** By the way, the original script did not have Doctor Who characters; I only added them in because the Conscience reminded me so much of The Doctor. And there's a little bit of Harry Potter, but that was in the original script. The original script lines will be in bold italics, and the added bit will be in regular font (and regular italics for added thoughts).**

** Disclaimers: Shoot, I don't own Doctor Who or Harry Potter. **

** On with the play, for the play's the thing!**

* * *

The scene is a dark, narrow, candle-lit corridor. The gray stone walls were damp with moisture and a draft blew through the castle of Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor. A single door graced the wall of this corridor, the assigned guest bedroom for the old and wise King Duncan, and outside of this oak door were two guards.

In appearance, the two young men were nearly identical. Both were rather tall in stature, well-built, as soldiers in service to their thane ought to be, and both had dark brown hair that hung around their brown eyes. Both wore armor, and upon their uniform was the crest of their thane, Macbeth.

The one lying on the ground was Cedric, a young man of twenty who had only served as a guard for a little over a year. His hair was cut close to his head, his face was clean-shaven, his armor immaculate, and the young man's delicate brow furrowed even as he slept. The other, leaning against the doorpost was Edward, a thirty-one-year-old man who had served Macbeth for over ten years. His hair hung to his shoulders, his unshaven face gave him an air of ruggedness and experience as a soldier, and though he told Cedric that he would take the watch to let the younger man sleep, he allowed himself to nod off.

Cedric and Edward awoke with a series of yawns and stretching before anyone could pass by and rebuke them for their lack of attention.

With a groan, Cedric brought a pale hand to his forehead and said, "_**Oh, the indulgence of drink hath brought its curse. The aching of my head blindeth me!**_"

Edward absentmindedly nodded, feeling the effects of the drink that Lady Macbeth graciously offered them on their watch. Then, he looked down at his uniform. "_**Hold, old fellow!**_" he cried as he stood, horror filling his voice and visible on his face, "_**What are these stains that mar our linen? Blood? From whence did it come?**_"

Cedric snapped, "_**Thou liest!**_" However, when his large eyes moved over his own body, he realized that he, too, was covered in a red-turning-black substance. Meekly, for he felt like a fool for his hasty outburst, he added, "_**What makes ye believe the stains are blood?**_"

Edward brought his arm up to his nose and sniffed. "_**The linen hath the odor of battle,**_" he told Cedric. Then, much to the shock of the younger man, Edward licked one of the black stains on his arm. With a look of disgust, Edward muttered, "_**My tongue tastes blood.**_"

Cedric, desperate for an explanation other than the one that was becoming alarmingly apparent, asked, "_**Yet thou hast forgotten that the blood of an animal is not so different from the blood of Man. Perchance thou hast skewered a dog in thy slumber?**_" Cedric smelled a stain on his shoulder and licked it before confirming with a dejected shake of his bare head, "_**Indeed, it is blood.**_"

Then, Cedric's posture straightened as another idea came to his mind. "_**Perchance we art still in the embrace of Morpheus? Perchance we still slumber, and dreamt of this foul deed?**_"

Edward scoffed, "_**If we were indeed in the throes of slumber, then wherefore do we dreameth the same dream?**_" Then, his beady eyes widened with fear. He reached out and grasped Cedric's thin shoulders with painful force, and he half-shouted, "_**Our sovereign! My drunken mind hath abandoned all thought of our duty. Awaken our noble king, and prove that Morpheus hath no hold over us!**_"

Cedric nodded, and softly said, "_**Anon, I shall**_." The young man removed himself from Edward's grip, and his bare hand grasped the brass knob of the door. Without a sound, Cedric opened the door and slipped inside. From outside the door, Edward watched as Cedric approached the bed of the king. Bending over Kind Duncan's form, the younger man poked and prodded the body, his movements becoming more desperate and rough. Then, he let out a scream and dashed into the corridor to the confused Edward. Eyes wide, body heaving in panic, Cedric cried, "_**The bosom of our king is pierced! The life-blood is banished from him! I and thou art the sorriest of mortals!**_"

In the split second between Cedric's words and the inevitable mumbling and moaning that the older man knew would follow, Edward slapped Cedric. "_**Screw thy head and thy courage fast, ye mammering, beef-witted lout!**_" he hissed, baring his teeth like a wild dog. Edward took Cedric's head in his hands and stared into his frightened eyes. "_**See thither,**_" he said, pointing to an object that lay in the shadows fifteen feet from the pair, "_**A pot of water sits. Let us wash this foul humor from our hands and change our linen, and thus riddeth ourselves of guilt!**_"

Without another word, both guards rushed to the cauldron and started scrubbing the grime from their armor.

Meanwhile, blond-haired Macbeth swaggered down the hallway, confidence radiating from his being. Gleefully, he thought to himself, _King Macbeth! I shall be King as the wretched wraiths foretold! Perchance the darkness of the night and my kinship to Duncan hath made my hand tremble and my mind weak. None suspect that I hath done murder; indeed, none suspect that murder hath been done! _The thane turned the corner and entered the corridor, and froze. There, the two guards upon whom his wife placed the evidence of his crime were washing their armor in a pot. The men's eyes darted to Macbeth, filled with terror. For a moment, Macbeth feared that he had been discovered. Then, hearing the commanding voice of his wife in his ears, he straightened his posture, and placed a mask of anger over his face.

"_**How now, ye blackguards! Thou art villainous, ill-breeding boar-pigs! Ye wayward, traitorous flax-wenches! Ye venomed, folly-fallen horn-beasts!**_" he bellowed at the cowering guards, shaking his fists to add authenticity to his act.

Edward, stalling to create an argument before Cedric could break down and do something insane, leaned toward Cedric and whispered, "_**Methinks the man doth curse too much!**_"

At Edward's casual remark, Macbeth's act became genuine anger. He snarled, "_**Heathens! Thou hast murdered your sovereign—**_"

"_**—Thy servants did no such thing!**_" Cedric desperately cried, his face white.

"_**What of the blood upon thy linen? How dare thee protest in the face of direst condemnation!**_" Macbeth unsheathed his sword and announced, "_**I shall unseam thee from the nave to the chops by the sword, thou impertinent, boil-brained codpieces!**_" Without warning, the red-faced warrior raised his sword above his head, prepared to thrust the blade through Cedric's chest.

All of a sudden, a disembodied voice rang through the corridor. "_**Avada Kedavera!**_"

Within the span of a second, Cedric's eyes rolled up into his head, a low moan escaped his blue lips, and he crumbled to the floor, dead.

Macbeth's sword arm froze. While Edward stared at his fallen comrade, Macbeth's head whirled around, his gray eyes searching for the source of the voice and the cause of Cedric's death. Then, the disembodied voice spoke again, saying, "_**Oops! Sorry, wrong spell. Tempus Consisto!**_"

Macbeth turned to Edward, and found that his guard was frozen. Not in fear, disbelief, or shock; the soldier was frozen as if time had ceased to move. His greasy hair hung suspended in the air, and some droplets of water, which flew from Edward's uniform while he was in mid-spin, neither fell to the ground nor flew as a projectile should. _Some eldritch force of God or the Devil hath done this, _Macbeth thought to himself as he waited for a continuation of events.

The disembodied voice spoke a third time, saying, "_**Blimey, it's dark in here. Sorry Macbeth, freezing time is not my forte.**_" Then, from around the corner, a man emerged. He wore a brown piece of cloth that Macbeth thought resembled a cape, with a blue suit of cloth underneath. His brown hair was tousled, and in his brown eyes was a wild, adventurous look. Grinning like a madman, the strange man sauntered up to Macbeth. "_**Now then, you and I need to have a little chat. Pardon me…**_" the tall man grunted, then bent over as he viciously hacked. Macbeth caught sight of the back of his neck, and noticed a strange orifice that resembled a belly button. Before the strange sight could register in the bewildered thane's head, the man straightened and cleared his throat before continuing with, "_**My tongue takes no small amount of time to adjust to thine age."**_

Macbeth let his sword arm drop to his side, but he did not sheath the weapon. Stepping forward, he asked, "_**How dost thee know my name? And of what manner of spirit art thee?**_"

The man placed a hand on his chest, and answered, "_**I am thy conscience**_."

"_**Wherefore didst thee slayeth the guard? That is my pleasure— er, duty!**_" Macbeth mentally checked himself for allowing a hint of his murderous intention slip through.

The tall, thin man flipped his bony hand in a careless manner. He muttered, "_**Oh, an accidental casualty; slip of my tongue, 'tis all. **_Not my fault that the TARDIS translator needs a bit of word. Blimey, my Elizabethan English needs a bit of work. Quite a shame, really. After all, I met Shakespeare twice; I ought to have picked up a thing or two. _**What of thee, Glamis and Cawdor; what befuddles thee?**_"

Distracted by the strange man's speech, Macbeth felt that he had no choice but to speak of the terrible deeds he committed. "_**Many a tragic thought weighs upon my mind. The black hags' prophecies hath driven me to the murder of my king and kinsmen, Duncan,**_" he confessed, his broad, proud shoulders drooping. Out of the corner of his keen eye, he saw the strange man take a strange, wooden device from behind his back. The still-grinning man placed the item on his left shoulder, tucking the wider end under his chin. With a long, wooden thing that resembled a tree branch with horsehair strung between the ends, he sawed at the unknown object. Unique, mournful, and beautiful music filled the air, and Macbeth continued with, "_**Visions plague my light sleep, and now I must kill that ill-fortuned sot there,**_" Macbeth pointed to the still-frozen Edward, who remained in the crouch he was in at the time of the strange man's appearance, "_**for he remains a witness to my foulest of deeds. Therefore, I hath no choice but to take his life, and thus secure mine.**_" Macbeth, his curiosity piqued by the instrument, asked, "_**By God, what art thou playing?**_"

The man's bright smile grew wider as he answered, "_**Soliloquy music. **_Mozart himself taught me to play the violin. _**Soliloquy on, my dear Macbeth!**_"

Losing patience, and curiosity growing ever more powerful, Macbeth gritted his teeth and inquired, "_**What art thou? What is thy purpose?**_"

"_**Argh! Once more unto the breach!**_" the man gasped in frustration. Then, he sighed with disappointment, laid the instrument aside, and gazed into Macbeth's gray eyes with his own brown ones, which burned with an inner fire that Macbeth found too bright to face. The man stated, his voice firm, "_**Macbeth, 'tis true that I am thy conscience. Yet, I liest whence I say that I belongest merely to thee. All of men, from Adam's birth into thy furthest future, sharest a single entity that serves as their conscience, and that entity is me, myself, and I. Whence a bumbling fool like thee strays onto the path of evil, I cometh forth and attempt to right thy path.**_" As the man rambled on, his voice fluctuated, his hands waved about, and he paced around Macbeth as if his words made his body come alive. "_**In thy case, thou art about to kill this hapless, frozen sot, and I alone cast cry, 'Hold, enough!'**_" Macbeth watched as the man flitted this way and that, and though he was certain that the man was mad, the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor understood what he was saying. Then, a corner of the man's mouth turned up into a sheepish smile as he admitted, "_**Perchance I hath permitted a few men to go astray. Jack the Ripper comes to mind. **_Sorry about that one, I was kind of distracted with a Cyberman invasion." The man rubbed the back of his head for emphasis.

Macbeth shook his head, and gripped the golden hilt of his sword tighter. "_**I hath no need of thee,**_" he spat.

The man's whole form lost the child-like bounce and innocence he formerly displayed. He folded his hands across his chest, glared at Macbeth, and retorted, "_**Of course thou dost. Wherefore am I hither?**_"

Without a moment's hesitation, Macbeth explained, "_**I hath no want of thee. Evil controls the very thoughts of my mind, and no force from God can stay y hand further. I fear I shall go mad!**_"

The man, whose face now contorted in rage, put himself in Macbeth's bearded face and stated, "_**Thy impertinence wears upon me. Thou art stuck with me until ye right thy ways!" **_With that, the man drew a silver, foot-long device from behind him and pointed it at Macbeth. Macbeth, though not able to recognize the cylindrical object, recognized the danger. With a battle cry, the warrior swung his sword at the man's hand. The sword cut through the wrist, and the red bolt of light that emerged from the object flew to Macbeth's right. All the tall man had time for was to scream in pain and grasp his stump with his other hand.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Macbeth brought his sword above his head and plunged it through the man's chest.

There was the sound of a body hitting the black stone floor, then silence.

Macbeth wiped his bloodied sword on his leg, and then stood over the dead body of the strange man, whose brown eyes were glazed over in death. Kicking the body to confirm that the being was dead, Macbeth shrugged and whispered, "_**Now I am not stuck with thee.**_"

Then, a strange whooshing noise filled the air, and Edward, whom Macbeth had forgotten, fell to the floor. The guard gasped a few breaths, holding himself up with his hands. Then, Edward's gaze climbed up to Macbeth, who stood over him with his sword unsheathed and blood on his tunic. Edward's mouth dropped open, he trembled, and he fearfully stammered, "_**Pray, Thane of Glamis, hath drink dulled my senses? Can thou unveilest the shroud that covers my senses?**_"

Macbeth tilted his head and sneered, "_**My conscience hath no hold over me. I hath slain him, and I shalt slay thee.**_"

"_**What? What dost thou mean?**_"

Macbeth, however, did not give him an explanation. He drew back his sword and stabbed Edward through the heart. A sigh of the release of tension escaped his lips as the last witness fell dead at his feet. Moving swiftly, Macbeth washed his sword in the waters of the pot, placed the bodies of the guards next to the door, and shoved the body of the strange man under the bed in the bedroom.

Before he turned to go to the main floor, Macbeth stared at the scene he created. Then, as he turned on his heel, he muttered under his breath, "_**Frothing, earth-vexing flap-dragons!**_"

"… And that," the Doctor concluded as he leaned toward Donna, "is how Macbeth saved the universe."

Donna stared at him, letting the details of the story sink into her mind. _This is one story I will never forget, _she told herself as the Doctor stood up from the yellow, worn-out couch and moved to the TARDIS console. "But Doctor," she said as the Doctor started to manipulate the controls, "if the strange man wasn't you, then who was it?"

The Doctor turned to Donna, grinning. "That strange man was a Sontaran clone," he explained to his ginger companion, "and the strange thing that he pointed at Macbeth was a Sontaran blaster." The Doctor placed his hand over his mouth and let it drag over his face as he further said, "If I'm right, which I usually am, the Sontarans used a space-time distortion to enter an alternate reality in which Macbeth was a real person, and the events as Shakespeare wrote them really happened. Somehow they got a hold of my DNA, and created a clone that would be able to blend in with the indigenous species, which is humanity, and alter history. However, they forgot the itty-bitty detail about Macbeth himself." The Doctor shook his head with mirth as he moved around the console, with Donna following. He muttered, "Indomitable, you Humans, indomitable!"

The TARDIS was filled with noises of wheels turning, levers flipping, and buttons being pressed. Then, the Doctor shouted, "So, Donna! How about we make a stop in Yrchafindel? I think you'd find the tetra-centennial Festival of Planetary Alignment quite interesting…"

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**What did you all think? For all of you who have reviewed my stories so far, thank you so much! I promise that I will get back to "The Affair of the Angels that Wept"! If you have any questions, please ask in the review or PM me, and reviews are as precious to me as Melody Pond is to Madame Kovarian.  
**


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